English paper

Racism is a huge factor in many people’s lives today almost as much as it was back in history. It can start at such a young age, passed down from older generations, and can cause one to feel unaccepted or ashamed of who they truly are. Many older generations can still, to this day, have the same opinion as they did back when they were young as well as many children today. In the book “From Bodega Dreams” written by Ernesto Quinonez, young Latino high schoolers were introduced and the struggles they went through with one of their teachers who showed his racist ways daily. Working to put differences and backgrounds aside, the human race needs to come together as one and realize that skin color doesn’t make a person, but what’s inside that person actually defines them.

There were many examples shown in the short story “From Bodega Dreams” that showed how racism can affect children. In the beginning of the story, Mr. Blessington was introduced in a negative manner, instantly tormenting the children and putting them into stereotypes that he personally believed they should be in. An example is when Quinonez wrote “He kept telling us boys we were going to end up in jail and that all the girls were going to end up hooking” (p. 120); a student named Chino explaining what Mr. Blessington, his English teacher, would tell the class. Mr. Blessington clearly didn’t like the Latino children and would use derogatory terms and sayings to try and bring them down quite often. Clearly some children were affected more than others. Some of the children would blatantly not do what they were supposed to do because they were told that they were going to end up in jail anyways. Racism can make one feel truly unaccepted and unwanted and no one wants to feel that way.

In her novel “Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954”, Zoe Burkholder wrote that On May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the United States Supreme Court agreed that segregating American children on the basis of race in public schools violated their constitutional rights according to the 14th Amendment (p. 173). With that being said, the segregation of white and black might’ve been no more, the war against racism wasn’t quite over. Though the desegregation of schools mixed the black and white race, the problems continued due to the fact that the white people weren’t used to this and they didn’t want this to happen. The first African American students to attend an all-white school were tormented daily and taunted because of their skin color. To be constantly be belittled must be terribly hard and it’s a feeling that is unwanted.

Racism doesn’t only affect one certain race. It spreads across all kinds of races from African American, Asian, Caucasian, etcetera. In the book “Gender Identities and Young Children: Social Relations in a Multi-Ethnic, Inner Primary City”, Paul Connolly defines racism as simply a fixed and static set of beliefs, uniformly adhered to by certain groups (usually white people) and universally applied to other groups (usually African American or South Asian people) (p. 1 chapter 2). Connolly only seems to apply racism to specifically two races, though this may be half true, racism spreads through all the races. It also doesn’t only apply to today’s society. Racism dates all the way back to when the United States was founded. The English who founded the United States, took land from the people who were already settled there and forced them into reservations and called them “Indians”. Another example from history would be when African Americans were forced into slavery for many cruel years. One might think that after all the history of racism, that it wouldn’t be an issue today and yet it still plays a big role in many people’s lives. For example, the students at Julia de Burgos High School went through many different situations dealing with their English teacher. One particular event led to a physical altercation between the teacher and one of his students. In most circumstances, when a situation becomes physical, the minority tends to get the blame. As did Sapo when he got into a physical altercation with his English teacher.

In modern day society, there’s a big controversy on the racism aimed towards African Americans. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes in his book “Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States” that more poignantly most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for “whatever” race problem we have in this country (p. 1). Throughout his book, Bonilla-Silva gives plenty of details and examples of how the Caucasian race tends to be the most racist of all races. Bonilla-Silva also explained how African Americans and minorities receive lesser education than white people (p. 2). “From Bodega Dreams”, Mr. Blessington showed his racist side by tormenting his students and only having them reading writings by Robert Frost. He also told his students that he wouldn’t let them read anything written by Julia Burgos because she only wrote in Spanish and that it would be too hard to find anything she wrote in English and that he taught an English class (Quinonez 123). It’s not only with white people but in some cases, many tend to think that their own race is the best.

Caucasians can also fall under the victim side of racism. White people who come from the south can be referred to as “white trash” or “hillbillies”. Not only people from the south but also white people who are poor and live in bad neighborhoods can be called “trailer trash”. There’s also been circumstances where white people can be racist towards each other. Most people these days know about the notorious Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group who believe whites are the superior race. Another case would be the saying “white privilege” and how white people are prone to having better outcomes and scenarios compared to minorities. In this modern day and age, I believe this to be untrue